of the espers were still standing, and seven of the marines. Silence felt sick. It didn't seem possible that so many could have been killed so quickly. Frost put away her gun and pulled an incendiary grenade from her belt. Silence put a restraining hand on her arm.
'Use that grenade at this range, and the backblast'll fry all of us. Plus, there's no guarantee it would even work. That ugly-looking bastard shrugged off energy beams easily enough.'
Frost smiled briefly. 'I was going to make him eat it.'
'Not a bad idea,' said Silence, 'but we've still got one last card to play. Stelmach! Time for that secret weapon of yours!'
The Security Officer stared at him blankly, his eyes wide with shock. Silence cursed briefly. He started toward Stelmach, and the alien threw aside the Wampyr body it was holding and started toward him with slow, almost casual steps. It knew he had nowhere to go. Silence fired his disrupter, aiming for the glowing eyes. The energy beam glanced harmlessly away. Frost hefted her grenade and lunged forward. The alien slapped her away with a backhand sweep of its overlong arm. She crashed into the steel wall of the Vault and slumped dazed to the floor, the grenade falling unactivated from her hand. Silence gripped his sword fiercely. The alien's smile seemed very wide and very bloody.
And then Stelmach activated his secret weapon, and everything slowed right down. A glowing golden field formed around the alien, and it froze in its tracks, mouth still stretched in a crimson grin. A draining cold surged through Silence's bones, and it took all his strength to move away. His thoughts grew slow and sluggish, and then he had Frost by the arm and was dragging her clear off the field. After a moment, she was able to help him, and the two of them stumbled back to join Stelmach by his quietly humming machine. Life quickly came back to them, and Silence nodded to the Security Officer.
'I'm glad I brought you along after all. What the hell is that device?'
'Stasis projector; puts anything into stasis from practically any distance. Eats up power like crazy, but this was pretty much point-blank.'
'Correct me if I'm wrong,' said Frost, her voice perhaps just a little shaken, 'but I thought the whole point of a stasis field was that you couldn't project it? You set it up where you need it, and then turn it on or off.'
'Not anymore,' said Stelmach.
'And,' said Silence, just a little touchily, 'how come that projector's working when nothing else is?'
'This little beauty is based on different technology,' said Stelmach. 'The same technology that produced the new stardrive. Need I say more? No, I didn't think so. Apparently this technology is somewhat sturdier than our own. Perhaps even compatible… Even so, I recommend we get the alien upstairs and under wraps as quickly as possible. Just in case.'
'Hold on just a minute,' said Silence. 'Why didn't you use the damn thing the moment the alien appeared, instead of waiting till most of us were dead?'
'Right,' said Frost, dangerously.
'Ah,' said Stelmach. 'Basically, the techs who provided me with this device weren't actually one hundred percent sure it would work. In fact, they seemed to think there was a small but significant chance that the whole thing could detonate rather dramatically once it was turned on. Which is why I put off using it until I absolutely had to.'
'No wonder they wouldn't tell me what it was,' said Silence. 'If I'd known that, I wouldn't have let it on board my ship. Ah, hell, the alien's all yours. Get it out of my sight.'
Stelmach manipulated the controls of his projector, and the alien floated slowly forward, hovering barely an inch above the floor, buoyed up by the stasis field. The Security Officer moved cautiously forward, steering the alien ahead of him, and the two of them disappeared into the darkness that led back to the surface. Silence gestured for four marines to go after Stelmach and his prize, and then looked around to see how many of his people had survived the alien's attack. He was saddened but not surprised to find he had only two more marines and one esper left in his team. Everyone else was dead, their bloody remains scattered before the opening in the Vault wall. He shook his head slowly. So many dead, just to capture one of the creatures… The thought took hold of him suddenly, and he took a step toward the door in the wall. This time. Frost grabbed him by the arm.
'Way ahead of you, Captain. Now that the Vault's opened, where are all the other Sleepers? There were thousands of the things in the first Vault. Even so, I don't think just casually walking into the Vault to take a look is a good idea.'
'All right,' said Silence. 'What do you suggest?'
'We've got one esper left. Let him work for his pay.'
Silence and Frost looked at the single surviving esper, and he looked back at them with a bitter resignation. He was tall and slender, with a tired, washed-out look, colorless blond hair, pale blue eyes and a surprisingly firm mouth. Silence reminded himself that this man had survived when his fellow espers hadn't.
'You don't have to do this,' he said quietly. 'You've done more than enough already, and I'll see you're mentioned in my report. But we have to know what's going on in that vault, and you're all we've got.'
'I know,' said the esper in a voice too tired even to be angry. 'In the end, it always comes down to me and my kind, doesn't it?'
He moved toward the Vault wall without waiting for an answer and stopped just inside the doorway. His back straightened with a snap, and a shocked gasp escaped his lips. Silence stared after him, and the esper waved him back without looking round.
'I'm all right. I just wasn't prepared for this when I opened my mind. All I can see is space, stretching away in all directions. No life, or trace of life. We got here too late. Whatever happened here, it's over.'
'Any idea of what happened?' said Silence.
'It's too big,' said the esper. 'I feel like a fly crawling across the stained-glass window of a cathedral and trying to comprehend its function.'
'Whatever happened here, it must have left impressions,' said Frost. 'Go deeper. We have to know. What happened to the other Sleepers?'
The esper groaned loudly, cords of muscle standing out in his neck. 'The violence… death and slaughter and more … the walls are full of it. There were thousands of the aliens here, too many to count, packed together like insects in a hive. Sleeping. Waiting. Then something broke in and woke them up. Ghost Warriors.'
Silence and Frost looked at each other. Ghost Warriors were human corpses used as weapons, guided by computer implants, controlled by the rogue AIs of Shub.
'The Vault was swarming with them, fighting the aliens, armed with strange weapons I don't recognize. And in the end, they pulled the Sleepers down by sheer force of numbers and dragged them away. They took the damaged Ghost Warriors, too, for repairing and recycling later. The Warriors weren't affected by the city because they weren't really here; their controllers were safe back on Shub. Maybe it wouldn't have affected them anyway; the AIs don't think like we do.'
For a long moment, the esper didn't say anything. Silence cleared his throat. 'Why did they leave one alien behind?'
'As a surprise for whoever came after them. The AIs wanted you to know what happened here. They're going to make Ghost Warriors out of the Sleepers and turn them loose on the Empire. Give me your disrupter. Captain.'
Silence frowned. 'Is there something still in there?'
'Just give me your gun, Captain.'
Silence stepped forward and the esper turned unhurriedly to take the disrupter. Silence caught a glimpse of the Vault's interior, and looked away as he stepped back. The esper was right. It was too big. The esper hefted the gun in his hand, as though surprised by the weight. Perhaps he was. Espers weren't usually allowed weapons. He looked at Silence calmly.
'I've seen what Shub has planned for us. It's horrible. I have no wish to see it happen. Goodbye, Captain. It's been… interesting. I'd damn you and the Empire to hell, but hell is coming for you anyway.'
And he put the gun to his head, and shot himself. Silence cursed as the headless body slumped to the floor and knelt down to pry his disrupter from the esper's hand. 'Damn. That is not going to look good on my report. I should have known better than to give him a gun.'
Frost shrugged. 'Espers. Fragile, all of them.'
Silence straightened up and bolstered his gun. 'Sleeper Ghost Warriors… they'd be unstoppable in the field.
